1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to a wireless communication system. More particularly, the present invention relates to an emulation device and method for supporting Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6) over an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 802.16/Wireless Broadband (WiBro) communication network.
2. Description of the Related Art
A broadband wireless communication network technology known as World Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMax) has recently been adopted as the IEEE 802.16 standard by the IEEE, and a version of WiMax for mobile access, WiBro has been also adopted as IEEE 802.16e. Hence, commercial deployment of portable Internet communication services based on these standards has accelerated.
However, since the IEEE 802.16/802.16e standards are different from the existing radio access technologies including IEEE 802.11x or 3G, IPv4 or IPv6 cannot be directly applied to an IEEE 802.11 network.
For IPv6, a Neighbor Discovery (ND) protocol providing broadcast or multicast message exchanges in the processes of address resolution, router discovery, duplicate address detection, and auto configuration, which are performed by broadcast or multicast, is a requisite to a terminal. However, the IEEE 802.16 network is a point-to-multipoint network and the terminal cannot broadcast or multicast. Therefore, the ND protocol of IPv6 cannot work well.
Accordingly, there is a need for an improved emulation device and method that supports Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).